Effective United States military support of counterinsurgency efforts in developing nations almost always takes the form of indirect support-- training, advisory assistance, logistics support, and supply of essential military equipment. The aggregate of actions taken to help a government resist a revolutionary insurgency is called foreign internal defense. The theme of this monograph is the lack of organized capability in the US Air Force to conduct foreign internal defense (FID), specifically training and advisory assistance, in support of national policy. During the 1960s, the USAF Special Air Warfare Center (SAWC) possessed the capability to train friendly foreign governments how to effectively employ air power in a counterinsurgency environment. That capability was lost when the SAWC was deactivated in 1974 in the wake of Vietnam. The thesis of this paper is that the need for such an organization still exists and offers a proposal to restore the capability in the US Air Force.

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